I've tried it all….

[Anonymous]

Hi, my name is Carrie and I’m a new mom of twin boys, Ben and Brady. They were born very premature at 30 weeks and we have gone through a lot to reach the good point we are at now, the boys are 8 months (adjusted age 5 1/2 months). The biggest problem we are still having is Brady’s horrible reflux problem. Brady’s trouble with reflux started very early on in this 3 month stay in the NICU. When he first had problems feeding they said he was intolerant to breastmilk and placed him on Nutramigen formula. Then about a month later I all of a sudden received a call from the NICU that Brady had to go in for surgery because he had pyloric stenosis. That is basically when the muscle at the bottom of the stomach is not open large enough for anything to pass through and it causes the baby to basically projectile spit up. We thought this would be the answer to Brady’s problem but it was not. He no longer projectile spit up but still was spitting up a lot of his bottles. He then was placed on Prevacid and Reglan. This seemed to help for a while until he was released from the hospital. They took him off the Reglan and only sent him home on Prevacid. After 2 weeks of being at home only on Prevacid, Brady had to be readmitted to the hospital for failure to gain weight because of the excessive amounts that he was spitting up. During this next 10 day stay at the hospital we tried many different things. First surgery came down and had to perform a scope on Brady to make sure the pyloric stenosis had not come back, the opening had closed a little but not enough to be a problem. From there we tried many things from changing the calorie count on his formula from 24 to 27 to 30 and back down to 27, then feeding him every 3 hours to every 2 hours to even every hour, and even throughout the night! AND KEEP IN MIND I HAVE TWINS WHICH MADE THIS CRAZY FEEDING SCHEDULE CLOSE TO IMPOSSIBLE! I wanted to reinstate the Reglan but the GI department at the hospital would not agree because of the side effects that it could cause if a baby was on it for too long. So then we tried a combination of Zantac and Prevacid and tried to thicken his formula with rice mixed in. This combinaton was enough for him to keep enough down to start to gain weight effectively and we got to go home again. We are still on this combination and have started solids. I had hoped that once we started solids that his spit up problem would stop but it has not. The doctors basically are saying now that as long as he is gaining weight there is really nothing else we can do. But I dont think they understand how much he really does spit up and how it affects our everyday life. He goes through at least 5 outfits a day and its sad when people tend to want to hold his brother more because they are afraid to get soaked. So I was hoping that someone here would know of something that I have not tried that worked for you, because my doctors seem to think I have run the gauntlet of options and we just have to wait for him to outgrow it! And I’m beginning to feel like he never will!! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

[Anonymous]

Hi and Welcome! Congrats on your NICU grads! OK, well, my first question would be is he in pain. If he is, then you need to keep pushing to get things right. If he is out of pain, I can relate to the EXCESSIVE spit up. Like 12 times every time Dylan ate. It was HORRIBLE. I also hated all that spit up and used towels instead of burp cloths and had to buy a bunch of those door mats and just tried to strategically place them so that he didn’t ruin all of the floors. I also purchased some of those rubber mats and put them all over the playroom floor for easy clean up. I did not find a solution to the spit up, but as long as he was gaining weight and he was not in pain, we did have to wait for him to grow out of it. It did feel like forever, but I was happier to have a laundry problem than no sleep and a baby in a ton of pain. This post from me is probably not helpful at all, and i am sorry… I did find, though, that after feeds, if I propped him up in the exersaucer (full of spit up and had to be tossed!) but the spit up was a bit less as he was a bit upright and not moving as much after feeds. Also, at night, to minimize the disruptive bed changing, I elevated the bed and bought some of those cloths that can tie at either side of the crib and is place where his head was. If he spit up at night, I could just remove that (I had a couple back to back, so I could remove one and the next one was right there) and then it would minimize my time at night trying to get the bed changed.

I know this part can be so hard, and you have it x2! Hang in there and know you have found a wonderful support group!

[Anonymous]

if your little one is gaining weight now and is happy, there really isn’t much you can do about the spit up. my oldest daughter spit up sooo much, but she was fat and happy. my 3rd child spit up all the time, was underweight and sickly looking and cried until he was two—but nobody ever suggested reflux—i think it was before they realized infants could have such trouble with it. my youngest had to be held 24 hours a day for almost 2 months and was on oxygen for a month because she kept desatting—they told me her lungs were immature–she was full term–i’m pretty sure now that it was the reflux causing the desatting. she was not able to keep enough down to gain weight and was failure to thrive. by 8 months her esohpagus was getting ulcerated and she was refluxing almost 25% of the time. she had to have a fundo–and they discovered she had a hiatal hernia. she was on the extreme end of reflux–most people don’t have to go down that road.

i always made sure i held her facing me when i went into a clothing store, and we bought a big plastic-backed cloth to put on our floor to keep from ruining our carpet.

i have seen some really niftly bibs that might work for you–but i’m not sure where to tell you to find them—they would sure help you not have to change his outfits so much. they go over the neck and are like a big towel and they have ribbing at the wrists, too. if i can find them somewhere, i’ll post a link (or have laura do it—she’s so much bette at it!)

interestingly enough, my daughter spit up more when she was upright than when she was lying down.

i understand the difficulty of twins, too. we just took our 18 year old twin daughters off to college yesterday—–and yes, between them leaving, sylvia starting kindergarten, and my mother recently having left town, i am having a nervous breakdown.

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